Bulk mail accounts for a significant portion of the mail delivered by shipping organizations such as the United States Postal Service (USPS). Bulk rate mail discounts are provided by the USPS to organizations that prepare mail in a manner that minimizes mail handling at post office processing stations. Pieces of processed mail must be bundled according to USPS sorting rules and must also meet certain criteria set forth in various postal regulations in order to qualify for reduced rates. In an effort to lower such bulk mail operating costs, however, and also increase value for their customer base, many organizations and businesses typically prepare packages and other items utilizing automated equipment that presorts and labels the items prior to placement of the items into the delivery system, Users may realize cost savings due to such presorting and processing approaches. For example, many delivery system operators provide discounts on presorted items as the amount of sorting necessary by the delivery system operator is reduced.
Typical methods for separating of pieces of mail into bulk mail bundles are manual in nature. The pieces are manually sorted after labels have been applied to the mail. Such labels may include each of the necessary designations to determine the appropriate bulk mail criteria into which they fall. Another common manual technique involves manually determining the particular bundle into which each piece of mail piece is placed and coding each address record as such so that a computer printed address label ultimately appears in the bulk mail sequence. Because such methods are manual in nature, they do not provide for the efficient processing of bulk mail oriented transactions. Some prior art methods have attempted to solve such problems utilizing data sorting software. Such software provides a number of options for data sorting and typically does comply with USPS regulations; however, these techniques are limited in their sorting and delivery efficiencies.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved bulk mailing production system and method that ensures postal regulation compliance in the printing of variable documents by evaluating particular data (e.g., zip code) and then processing such data for improved efficiencies in the delivery of correspondence.